Monday, March 14, 2005

Some Things Right?

A: When it’s dished out to W. by the Lefties on the Star & Sickle editorial board.

This drivel shows either a complete ignorance of how the world works a total disregard of reality. I’m betting the truth is somewhere in between.

Let’s start here, shall we, rehashing old ground:

He wasn't right about weapons of mass destruction; nor was he right about Iraq's links to terrorists.

Regarding WMD, everyone, and I mean everyone – W, Teddy K, John Fing K, Bill & Hill, Madeline Albright – thought Saddam had ‘em. Even Saddam thought he had nukes. He didn’t know his scientists were pretending for fear of being killed by the SOB.

As for links to terrorists: I don’t care how far to the left they are, one must be a cretin to not consider Saddam’s payments of $25 Grand to the families of suicide bombers as a link.

Now we’ll grudgingly give W some credit for his words, not for what is happening:

So even though it's still early days, give Bush his due; when most experts believed democracy stood no chance in the region, he did. The power of that belief has had an effect. You might say Bush spoke truth to despotic power.

Conveniently missing from this is the corollary: Boy, we lefties sure were fooled. Who’d a thunk them arabs would actually want to be free.

Now the big hit, the “Reagan” hit I will call it. The left never has given President Reagan any credit for the fall of the Evil Empire, and they never will. It matters not that crushing Communism was his primary foreign policy goals. That it occurred is a mere coincidence. In fact, they will argue, Gorby had more to do with the collapse than President Reagan.

So, how do they explain the following:

In many spots dotting the Middle East, the seeds of democracy appear to be sprouting. The Palestinians have elected a new leader, and the first elections in Iraq were a remarkable success. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has announced his government will allow its first multi-candidate election for president. In Saudi Arabia, male voters are being allowed to elect municipal councils for the first time. Pressure is growing for national elections in the United Arab Emirates. And in Lebanon, domestic discontent and international leverage after an assassination have caused a pro-Syrian government to fall (although it is now back) and forced Syria to make at least token steps toward withdrawing its troops.

Lord knows it couldn’t have anything to do with W’s policy. You see, all this was going to happen because:

• The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They caused many Middle Eastern dictators to confront for the first time the threat that radical Islam poses to them. Some concluded that the best way to defuse that radicalism was to move toward democracy, albeit with baby steps.

When did the confrontation start? Was it while people were dancing in the streets at the site of the attacks, or did that come on the next day? What crap this is. There was no move toward democracy and to say there was is an absolute lie.

• Yasser Arafat's death. The current intefadeh has exhausted both Israelis and Palestinians, but it had long been accepted that little progress would be possible between Israelis and Palestinians until Arafat left the scene. That is exactly what happened: He died, and the Palestinian people elected the more moderate and conciliatory Mahmoud Abbas to replace him. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reached out, somewhat tentatively, to Abbas, and the opportunity for a breakthrough has been created. Bush has been deft in exploiting the opportunity, but he didn't create it.

What’s this, an attempt to give W praise for effective use of diplomacy? As for having long accepted Arafat’s death would provide the open door, I’m compelled now to ask if the S&S Lefties will rethink their earlier position that the US needed to take a larger role in the Israeli & Palestinian conflict. Early in W’s administration the call was for more involvement. Perhaps W was right again knowing that, regardless of how involved he was, as long as Arafat was alive it was time and effort wasted.

• The Internet and Al Jazeera. The population of most Arab nations is heavily weighted toward those younger than 30. They are Internet-savvy, they watch Al Jazeera, and they travel. So they know what is going on in the world, and when they see something like the inspiring orange revolution in Ukraine, in which a bunch of young people stared down a corrupt oligarchy with close ties to the Kremlin, or the purple-thumb revolution in Iraq or Abbas' election in Gaza and the West Bank, they begin to see a wave forming, and they dare to hope that they, too, might get a chance to ride it.

I’ll give them the part about riding the wave, but if the young people didn’t think they would have the support of the US – remember W’s inaugural address, the part where he said we would support freedom seeking people? Sounds a bit like Reagan and his approach to Poland – they would be hesitant to rock the boat.

Given all this, there is a real danger in Bush pushing too hard and claiming too much; it tends to taint home-grown activists with pro-U.S. leanings.

Color me stupid, but I have no idea what this means or what caused them to write it. I, for one, haven’t seen W pushing too hard or claiming too much credit. On the contrary, he’s been very measured in both word and deed, as always, and is striking a nice posture as things continue to unfold.

The Lefties at the S&S and around the world will never understand W. And because of that, they will simply use the fallback position of claiming him to be dumb.